Red Rover, Red Rover

It’s a game from our childhoods.  One side calls to the other, “Red rover, red rover, let [fill in the blank] come over.”  And a child runs across the field trying to break through the line of the callers.  And so it goes until everyone is called across.

Children are the same, first century or twenty-first, ancient Palestine or modern North America.  Jesus alludes to such a game in this week’s gospel.  “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’”  (Mt. 11:16-17)  You can almost see the children running and laughing, bouncing between the groups—flute players who do not dance and wailers who do not mourn.  It’s a game. 

Jesus can certainly be serious when he wants to.  This week, I think he’s playing a game, and in encouraging a little playfulness in light of what could be a very serious situation.  After all, John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said he was a demon.  Jesus came both eating and drinking, and they said he was a drunkard and a glutton.  You can’t win.  You can get all serious about it or you can just laugh.  Laughing is better.

So, when it all seems to get too serious, just remember it’s a game.  Lighten up.  Relax.    Don’t be so uptight.  It’s just like Jesus said.  “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Peace,

That’s Bogus

My twenty-something son uses the word bogus in a curious way.  It’s hard to define.  There is much more to it than false or counterfeit, the standard dictionary meaning of the term.  For example, when told what I expect about responsibility with regard to paying bills, living in our house, what I’m willing to help with, and the strings that go with me helping in terms of making decisions, his response is, “That’s bogus!”  I think it means something like unjust, unfair, or maybe even hypocritical.  I feel like the dad who sent along some fatherly advice to his daughter and received a text message, “LOL.”  He thought it meant “Lots of Love.” 

Yet I’m pretty interested in my son’s use of bogus.  It’s a complex idea that he’s trying to express, misguided though he may be.  Somehow, bogus seems to fit it.

It’s like the New Testament’s use of the term righteousness, which is likewise a pretty complicated idea.  Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament goes on for over 50 pages about what this word means in scripture.  I think my son would describe that fact as bogus. 

Nevertheless, here’s the basic idea.  It refers to relationship, the relationship between humans and God, and the conduct that follows from such a relationship.  In the Old Testament, it is defined by the law.  In the New Testament, it is defined by the grace offered to humanity in Christ.  It is about the term of relationship, a covenant if you will.

That’s the sense in which righteousness is used in the epistle and gospel for this Sunday.  “No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.”  (Rom. 6:13)  The issue is how to live out a relationship with God, to align with God’s purposes in the relationship, the relationship with ourselves and with the world.

It is likewise in the gospel.  “Whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous.”  (Rom. 10:41)  In other words, our relationships with each other reflect the status of our relationship with God.

Bogus to my son is also a relational word.  What he was trying to express about my plan toward encouraging responsibility and self-sufficiency is that he didn’t like what he thought (incorrectly, by the way) it was saying about the relationship.  Bogus is to break, or perhaps to change, a relationship.

Here’s what the theological term righteous means.  It means the opposite of bogus.

Peace,

My Favorite Baptismal Promise

There are three statements in the Baptismal Covenant, each one beginning with “I believe.”  At any given moment they’re each a little iffy, but I try.  There are also five vows.  They are made with the words “I will, with God’s help.”  Four are completely unrealistic.  One is not.  It is my favorite one. 
 

We can pretty much count on failures in the four I mentioned:  faithfulness in worship and prayer, proclaiming the good news of God in Christ by word and example, loving one’s neighbor as oneself, and striving for justice and peace.  Sometimes we do.  Sometimes we don’t.  That’s about the most we can realistically hope for.  It just goes with being human.

There’s one other baptismal vow, though.  It includes this rather realistic view of humanity:  “Will you . . ., whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?”  Now that one has a note of realism about it, and a deep appreciation of what it is to be human.  Not if you fall into sin, but when you fall into sin. 

Of course, there’s the second part of that, the repentance and returning part.  That requires something on our part, but it is not quite like the other four promises, the ones we know we’re going to fail at.  Just as much as falling into sin is a part of what it is to be human, so returning to God is basically human, whether we recognize it or not.  To be human, I think, is to be basically inclined toward God.  Awareness is not required.  Neither is will.  It’s just our natural direction.  And you can catch glimpses of it in little moments of good in all human beings. 

That has something to do with what Paul spoke about the meaning of baptism.  “How can we who died to sin go on living in it?  Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life.”  (Rom. 6:2-4)  Christ’s death and his rising to newness of life sets our direction as irrevocably as being born human does.  It’s just human nature, as remade once and for all in Christ. 

“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.  We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.  For whoever has died is freed from sin.”  (Rom. 6”5-7)

Falling into sin and returning to God is one vow we can count on.  It’s just like being born and dying.  It’s just human.  That’s why it’s my favorite.

Peace,

The Golf Course and the Trinity

I’ve never had any doubt that God can be accessed on the golf course, even on a Sunday morning, a claim I’ve often heard absent parishioners make.  The question I have is more about accessing oneself than God.  

Being fully human, it seems to me, is about doing two things at the same time.  One is being able to be confident enough in who one is to stand alone, to take a stand, to do what one believes is right, whether or not it is popular and whether or not anyone else agrees.  It can be lonely being human.  Maybe this is what people find on the golf course.

The other, though, is to stay connected to others.  Part of it has to do with loving and acting on love.  Part of it has to do with appropriate attachments.  Part of it has to do with knowing where one person ends and another begins.  A lot of it has to do with what it means to live in community, to seek the common ground, to be part of something larger.  Equally important to being fully human is being together with others.  It is not good, God said, for humans to be alone.

Now anyone can do one of these things or the other.  It is also relatively easy to do each at different times, sometimes being a strong self and sometimes being together with others.  And, between the two, I’ll admit that the ability to be a strong self, able to take stands and withstand the forces of togetherness is the rarer ability.  So the golf course is not to be dismissed lightly. 

The real trick, though, is to do both things simultaneously, which is exceedingly challenging.  And it gets to the difficulties of living in a fully human way in the world.  It is the nature of being human because it is also the nature of God.  That is what the Doctrine of the Trinity is about.  Trinity Sunday, which is this week, is a good time to be reminded of it.

God is demonstrably capable of taking stands.  We know them through the law and the prophets.  And we know them through the teaching of Jesus.  The Spirit guides and leads.

God is also inherently connected.  Even within God’s own self, God is inherently communal.  The Father stands alone.  The Son stands alone.  The Spirit stands alone.  Yet the Father is connected to the Son, the Son is connected to the Spirit, and the Spirit is connected to the Father. 

Because it is God’s nature, it is ours as well.  We are, after all, created in God’s image.  God on the golf course is real enough.  The questions is are we?  It takes, I think, a threesome.  Then there’s every reason to think there could be a need for a taking a stand.  Whose rulebook is that in?  How many strokes did I really take?  Mulligans are a matter of grace.  At the same time, there is every opportunity to stay connected.  That’s why there’s a nineteenth hole.

Peace,